186G.] the Western Himalaya and Afyhan Mountains. Ill 



limestone, and these again by sandstone. No fossils have yet been dis- 

 covered in either the limestone or the sandstone, and the age of these 

 strata must therefore remain unknown for the present. Near Jellalabad 

 beds of gneissoid felstone appear. This rock is quarried to make hand- 

 mills which are brought down by the Povindahs and sold in Peshawur 

 and the Derajat. These hand-mills are made of a coarse trachyte which 

 has begun to effect a partial separation of minerals, and these minerals 

 are arranged in streaks of white, granular felspar, greyish-blue 

 felspar, with here and there a grain of augite. It is, therefore, again 

 one of the varieties of felstone seen at Baramoola, and probably the 

 same gneissoid variety quarried in Yusufzaie. 



15. — By reference to the map we observe that the Pir Punjal chain 

 is the first great parallel of the Himalaya, between the long. 73° 30' 

 and 76° E. It is a great chain, forming a belt of high mountains 

 between the miocene districts of Jummoo, Rajaori, Poonch and Ori 

 and the Kashmir valley, and at both ends of this great chain an 

 immense accumulation of porphyries and other volcanic rocks, rising 

 to tremendous heights, and covering some thousand square miles of 

 country, are placed like two bastions at the extremities of a centric 

 wall. What rocks then compose the connecting chain, the Pir 

 Punjal ? The reader will easily conceive how vexed I am that I was 

 prevented visiting this range, more especially as the information 

 I obtained from travellers is most conflicting and unsatisfactory. Mr. 

 L. Drew, who has traversed the chain three or four times, was especially 

 struck with the enormous development of a great slate bar of un- 

 known age. We shall see in the next chapter, how very thick and 

 extensive courses of slate are interstratified with beds of trachyte, 

 ash and agglomerate, in the mountains bounding the Kashmir valley 

 to the North. These slates are completely devoid of fossils, but as 

 I hope to be able to fix the age of the volcanic rocks with which 

 they are interbedded and contemporaneous, we had better reserve 

 the discussion of their age until after the examination of the fossili- 

 ferous strata of Kashmir. 



But the slates form only a band or bar in the Pir Punjal chain, 

 and not the whole of it. I believe, that the remainder of the rocks 

 of this range are mostly volcanic ash, felstone and agglomerates. A 

 friend of mine and a very trustworthy observer, in the following passage 



